Portland, Maine - Today, the Center for Sharing Public Health Services, a national initiative managed by the Kansas Health Institute (KHI) with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) announced that the City of Portland’s Public Health Division has been awarded $124,826 to develop a cross-jurisdictional sharing (CJS) model for public health service delivery with the county and state’s public health agencies. Together, the three agencies will determine where service gaps exist, analyze options for addressing the gaps and develop a plan for how CJS could reduce them.
“This grant will allow the city, county and state to explore how sharing scarce resources can improve the quality and efficiency of public health services,” stated Julie Sullivan, Director of the Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Division. “With resources scarce, it makes sense for public health experts at all levels of government to pursue opportunities to collaborate. Whether it’s vaccinating to prevent a flu epidemic or delivering services during a natural disaster, public health plays an important role in how well a community is able to respond and working together at all levels will only improve our ability to meet the public health needs of the region.”
Today’s announcement by the Center for Sharing Public Health Services included nearly $2 million in grant awards for sixteen teams of health departments to explore how “cross-jurisdictional sharing” might better equip them to fulfill their mission of protecting and promoting the health of the communities they serve. The two-year learning collaborative will help the teams – which include more than 75 public health departments and 26 local and state governments – explore ways to share resources with the goal of providing more efficient and effective public health services.
Communities across the country rely increasingly on public health departments for services ranging from immunizations and health education to disaster preparedness and response. In recent years, funding for public health has dropped significantly even as the mission of public health departments has continued to expand.
Cross-jurisdictional sharing enables health departments to share programs, services, and resources across the jurisdictions they serve. The projects being funded are aimed at helping health departments and policy makers test the potential of cross-jurisdictional sharing to expand the quality and availability of services while also improving efficiency. The Kansas Health Institute was selected to coordinate the grants as Center for Sharing Public Health Services in large part because of its experience guiding similar work among local health departments in Kansas.
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